On Thursday at six, the training sheds were packed for the ranked trial.
Both benches were full. Wall crews just off shift, mothers, little brothers, and a man selling tea from a big dented urn. The old tram rails in the concrete floor shone under the strip lights.
The board was lit with sixteen names, in the order they'd finished at the intake. Under the board was a square of mat with a rope around it.
At the top sat NAYLOR, R. Ross had won every station at the intake.
Alex sat at the far end in his vest and tried to look like he did this every week.
Every provisional wore one. The vests had panels that lit up where you were touched, and your board place was printed on the back in big white numbers. Alex's said 14.
'Fourteenth. Good. Nobody watches fourteenth.'
Eight bouts, three minutes each, every touch a point, and the board moved at the end. The top name picked his opponent first. By tradition, he picked the second, and the crowd got the bout it came for. A man in a crew jacket was already working along the front bench with a notebook, taking bets.
"Naylor by five! Who wants Naylor by five?"
Ross Naylor stood up.
His eyes went along the bench. Past the second-place man, a provisional with a silver ring in one ear and a big white 2 on his back, who was already half out of his seat. Past the third.
He kept going.
"Walker," he said.
The whole shed laughed.
The second-place man sat back down, slowly, with his face going red.
"He's picked the repair shop," he said, loud enough for the benches. "Go easy, Naylor. You break him, who's going to fix our phones?"
The laugh went around the shed a second time. The man with the notebook changed his odds on the spot.
"Naylor clean! Naylor eight to nothing!"
"I'm fourteenth," Alex said.
"I know where you are."
'Me? Why me? There are thirteen people above me!'
***
At the rack by the mat, while they checked each other's buckles, Naylor kept his voice low.
"Kessler doesn't come to intakes. He came to ours. He gave you a card. And you went for review at the Annex and came out passed in one morning."
"I've been coming here seven years. I'd like to know what I'm standing next to. That's all it is. I'll go easy for the first minute. Nobody will see."
Arthur was at the barrier, arms folded.
Halfway down on the left was Sam.
Sam had his coat on and a paper cup of tea in both hands. He'd closed the shop to come.
Next to Sam, taking up two places, sat Brett from upstairs, his lineage card on its blue lanyard, and his wife Lucy, still in her tram conductor's jacket. Alex could smell pastry in the bag on her lap.
She caught him staring. She stood up and waved with her whole arm.
"DOWNSTAIRS!" she shouted.
People turned around to see who she meant.
'Please. Mat, open up and swallow me.'
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The bell rang.
***
Naylor was very good.
He touched Alex on the shoulder. Alex's vest lit up, and the bench behind Naylor clapped.
He touched Alex on the hip. He was going easy, like he'd said, and making it look close.
Two to nothing...
"Wake him up, Naylor!" the second-place man called. The benches liked that one too.
The whole time, Alex was holding his new speed back, like a dog on a short leash. Lose this, and he stayed fourteenth and safe, and the Annex forgot his name by Friday.
"It's just us on the mat now," Naylor said. He wasn't even out of breath. "If it's there, I'd like to see it."
On the bench, Sam had stopped drinking his tea.
There were ninety seconds left on the clock above the board.
'Ninety seconds. Just ninety, and then I pull it back in.'
He let go.
***
Naylor came in for the third touch.
A flash of green lit the edge of Alex's eye.
MOVEMENT PATTERN IDENTIFIED
Alex had been watching him for ninety seconds, the way he used to watch a boss on its first run. Naylor's right shoulder dropped a finger's width before every lunge.
Naylor lunged, and Alex wasn't where he'd aimed it.
Alex put the end of his baton on Naylor's ribs, lightly, like tapping a phone screen to wake it up.
Naylor's vest lit.
He turned, fast. Alex was already around him, and the vest lit again, at the back.
The clapping stopped.
Naylor changed everything. His feet. His grip. He tried a move Alex had never seen before. Alex saw it start in the shoulder, and he walked straight through it.
Three. Four. Five.
At six, Naylor stopped trying to score and started trying to learn, watching Alex's feet the way Arthur had at the intake. It didn't get him a single point.
Seven. Eight.
On the last one, Alex had the baton a finger's width from Naylor's throat, stopped there. His other hand was flat on Naylor's chest. The vest was lit under his palm.
Naylor's pulse was jumping in the side of his neck, right above the baton. Alex could smell the sweat on him, salt and heat, and the blood moving under it. For half a second, he wanted that throat the way he'd wanted the meat in Sam's cooler.
'No. NO! Not him!'
The bell rang.
Alex stepped back. His heart was barely going any faster.
***
Nobody made a sound.
Two hundred people, and the only noise in the shed was the urn hissing.
At the end of the bench, a thin provisional held up his phone, its stopwatch still running.
"Ninety seconds," he said. "Eight in ninety seconds!"
The roar hit all at once. Benches stamped. A man near the door stood on his seat and yelled it like a name.
"NINETY SECONDS!"
The man with the notebook put his face in his hands.
On the board, the names were moving. Alex's didn't jump. It climbed, up past each name, one at a time. It pushed the silver-ring man down to third and stopped right under Naylor's.
NAYLOR, R.
WALKER, A.
'Real life finally has a spreadsheet... and I'm on it.'
Naylor had his hands on his knees. He straightened up, staring at the lit panels on his own vest.
"Where was that at the intake?"
"I was nervous."
"No, you weren't."
There was no anger in it. He was doing the math.
"Were you going easy on me? Tell me the truth."
"No," Alex said.
Naylor nodded slowly, in front of two hundred people. He held out his hand.
"Next month," he said. "I'll have studied it by then."
Alex shook it. This time, he didn't have to think about how hard to squeeze.
Along the front bench, the man with the notebook had to pay out. Only one hand went up with a ticket in it. It belonged to the heavy kid from the intake, the one whose wrist strap had been on backward, the one who hadn't laughed.
He held the ticket out at arm's length, looking as surprised as anybody, and the bookie counted a thick fold of bills into his palm while the whole bench stared.
At the rack, the numbers on the backs had to follow the board.
The silver-ring man came over. He undid his straps, pulled the vest with the 2 on it off over his head, and held it out to Alex.
His eyes stayed on the rack the whole time.
Alex took it, still warm, and handed over his 14.
***
Lucy pushed through the crowd at the rope and put a warm paper parcel in his hands.
"Eat that. You're too thin!"
Brett put one hand on Alex's shoulder, and it felt like someone setting a sandbag down on him.
Sam hadn't moved from the bench. He was cleaning his glasses with the end of his scarf.
"You closed the shop," Alex said.
"It was quiet."
"It's never quiet on a Thursday."
"Then I lost a day's money," Sam said.
He put his glasses back on. His eyes were still wet.
***
On Saturday, the depot window had his stipend in an envelope, plus a trial bonus for moving up the board. It wasn't much, but it was the first money Alex had ever been paid for being strong.
He signed for two packs of Grade C and ate one in the mess hall with six other Hunters, seared outside and dark in the middle, eating slowly like everyone else. Every bite went straight to the hunger, and the thin feeding bar at the edge of his eye crept up.
51%
Arthur found him there.
He didn't sit down. He had a clipboard with Sunday's corridor roster on it. Under the roster was Alex's file, open.
"You were clever," Arthur said.
"For ninety seconds."
"I counted."
He turned past the medical and stopped at the bottom copy of the form. The one with the signature.
He kept his eyes on it.
Alex watched Arthur's thumb move across the name, once, as if it might rub off.
"What?" Alex said.
Arthur closed the file.
"He doesn't sign those himself," he said.